starting may first i'm going to be going on 30 dates in 30 consecutive days and documenting each one through this blog and through film. if you'd like to be a date or a sponsor, email me at 30datesin30@gmail.com!

Monday, April 4, 2011

an excerpt

my sister and i were talking about dating and all of its frustrations last night when this excerpt from one of my brothers' writings came to mind. i originally read this about three years ago, but i always seem to come back to it. i think it's brilliant. enjoy...

Lexi Minowa was so sick of being hit on, or so she said. The reality was that she was sick of uninteresting, self-absorbed or misogynistic guys hitting on her. She actually did spend many an hour longing to meet a genuine, caring and interesting person. She was beginning to believe that she had impossible, unattainable standards. "All the same," she thought, "I'd rather hold out for something fulfilling than get involved in a relationship that will leave me unhappy and lonely. Being lonely while being alone was much more comfortable than being lonely while with someone."

While it was fairly difficult for Lexi to put into words what she was looking for in a guy, it was very easy for her to express what she wasn't looking for.

Uninteresting guys who she typically compared to hotel art. Both were uninspired, uninspiring and basically just took up space. Despite what she felt was an accurate description of both that type of man and that type of art, she did feel wrong speaking negatively of either one. Uninteresting guys were, for the most part, very nice and she did feel bad every time she broke a heart, but she was incapable of letting them in. They didn't inspire her creatively or emotionally. And, worst of all, since these guys had no ambition or passion outside of wanting to love and be loved, they would invest everything they had in her. Lexi Minowa, the semi-solitary artist, couldn't deal with the smothering of this magnitude.

She, quite frankly, didn't want to, as well as psychologically couldn't, spend all of her "free" time with someone. Furthermore, the fact that these guys were willing to do anyting for her was an utter turn off. "I just can't be attracted to a guy" she once wrote, "who doesn't have a strong self-identity, a strong self-love and an unwillingness to compromise himself. I don't want a guy I can find hanging in any given hotel room."

Self-absorbed guys were both better and worse than the uninteresting, nice, malleable guys. They were really only better in one regard: It wasn't nearly as heard to break up with or turn down, a guy who really only cared about himself. These guys were your classic scenesters, obsessed with cool and being cool, typically talking themselves up while verbally dragging down everyone else. And, of course, everything they created was brilliant, whatever pain they felt was more powerful and justified, and whatever they had to say was more important and pertinent. To guys such as this, all Lexi was to them was a punk rock princess, a walking accessory to make them look better. I might as well be a bracelet to these guys, she often thought. They didn't care about her or what she did, and that was something she couldn't tolerate. "If these guys are what 'cool' is," she mused, "then I'm happy being a total loser."

And then there were the misogynists. She was not about to be locked into a suburban prison washing dishes, vacuuming floors and producing babies. Lexi Minowa was not an appliance. These guys also really only cared about how she looked, but at least the self-absorbed scenesters wouldn't expect her to conform over time to some abstract societal idea of "normal." "Whatever," she had written in her black notebook, "Most of those guys just want to sleep with me because they assume that since I'm 'different', I must be a total wildcat in bed." She was, but that's not really the point. She needed someone to be with her because of who she is, not because of how she looks or what she can do for them.

"It ain't me babe," She became fond of quoting. "It ain't me you're looking for." Lexi wished more guys would trust her perception instead of trying to argue their case.